Profile For The Croz

Thank you everyone.

I know it is a wide range of answers. I'm not freaking out... I could care less about vacations. My wife, the travel agent, is worried that I won't be able to take any time off. I reminded her she can always take the kiddos without me.

I am going to a private school. I did my homework and found a government grant that I was eligible for so it will be 100% free and is 7 mins from my house.

If I wasn't eligible for the grant I would probably have ended up at Roehl with their CDL school. They are one of my top picks so far for possible employers.

Obviously, each carrier will be different, but I am hoping that some of you have some input to how vacation time or paid time off (PTO) works with carriers and company drivers. I searched for threads here on TT but only found one which was about 8 years old.

Background/situation:

I am currently a pharmacy technician and will be taking my CDL class in Oct/Nov 2024 and hope to start my new career in trucking starting in Jan 2025 (truckers make way more than a pharmacy tech). I am hoping for a Regional, maybe dedicated, route, if that matters. My wife is a travel agent, and we take about 3 weeks of vacation each year (split- usually a 2 week and 1 week) which helps stir up business for her. In my research it appears that a lot of carriers offer PTO and I have found some scales and tables, but I still have more questions than what they advertise. I’m also not ready to reach out to recruiters just yet.

Questions

1) Does anyone know if any “starter” carriers will allow me to take time off without pay?

2) How does PTO pay work? Is it a flat rate or do they take your weekly/monthly average to calculate what to pay you? The latter would make since as most appear to not give you PTO until you have completed 1 year of service.

3) I read that turnover is high, especially with starter companies. I don’t like to jump around but I realize that may be beneficial once I get 6-12 months experience. Do any ”# years experience required” carriers take your years of service into account when they add you to their system for PTO accrual? Probably not, just curious if they use that as incentive. To clarify, take this example. If I have 2 years of experience with company A and the next company hires me, company B. Would company B start me in their PTO scale as 2 years or would I start over at 0 years?

Any input you may have would be much appreciated. My wife has been 100% on board with me switching careers until she realized that I would be losing my 4 weeks of PTO/year. I am also not interested in becoming an O/O at this time. I will be a new driver and would not attempt this until I have several years of experience.

Thank you so much for your time.